Warnings: None, I guess.

The fourth day of the journey, somewhere before noon

Fíli

I skidded to a halt and tried to catch my breath with my hands on my knees. I had been running for the past ten minutes, and I thought the spiders had finally lost track of me.

In not such a long time, a group had formed around me. Kíli was there, as were Uncle Thorin and Mother – who had, by the way, found out that my brother and I had come with them, and were not very happy about that –, but I was still missing someone, although my head had not yet realised who it was.

The realization crashed into me, and when it did, it knocked the air out of my lungs.

Sam.

Sam was missing.

Uncle Thorin had started to count the Dwarves that were there, but the sound seemed far away. I could not wait. I needed to hurry. Without looking back, I spun around and started to run back to where I came from. Somebody shouted my name, but I did not listen.

Sam could have been eaten by a spider already – she was barely more than a mouthful for a monster that gigantic – but I refused to believe that she was dead. She could not be. It would be too dangerous if something went wrong and she would not be there to fix it.

That was what my head told me, but perhaps there was something in my heart, too, which I ignored. I could not risk letting my heart telling me things, not now.

My boots thumped on the cobblestones of the path as I looked at the thick layer of leaves above my head. I had remembered from last year that the spiders kept their preys high in the trees – I had been a prey myself back then – so that was where I needed to be. I started to climb a tree, and it went horribly slowly; I was good at climbing down, but climbing up always took a little more time.

The higher I got, the thicker the webs became. They stuck to my hair, my clothes, my hands – to everything. It did not take long before I got stuck.

I grabbed a knife from my belt to cut myself loose, but while doing so, I caused a vibration in the web. I quickly freed myself.

The spiders could be there any moment.

I decided that a stealthy approach was not going to work today, so I started to run on the branches, not caring if I attracted spiders by touching the webs; they were coming, any way.

"Sam! Sam, where are you?"

I only got silence as a reply, followed by a fast sound that was definitely spiders coming closer. I swore in Khuzdul and quickened my pace.

"Sam?"

Nothing.

"Sam!"

Nothing.

Then an idea started to form inside my head. It was a mad, dangerous and foolish idea, but it might work, and it seemed like the best of my options; it was either that, or fleeing and leaving Sam behind, or getting eaten.

Slowly and carefully, so that I would not fall down, I started to wrap myself in webs, my hand still gripping the knife in case something went wrong, until I could only see shapes and shadows through the thick material. I tried to lie as still as possible as the spiders came closer. I could smell their breath at some point; it reeked like blood and poison and other foul things.

There were two of them, as far as I knew, and they were hissing things to one another, things that gave me goose bumps.

"Another one!" one of them hissed, sounding delighted. "Let's eat it, let's rip off his skin, let's drink his blood!"

As you may expect, I was terrified in that short moment, and I wondered how I could have thought that this could end well. I hoped those beasts could not smell fear, because when a second spider began to speak, the knife nearly slipped out of my sweaty hands.

"Yesss," it hissed, and it made the 's' long and quiet. "Let'sss eat him now, now that he'sss fressh."

I gripped my weapon tighter as two shadows towered above me. I was just about to stab the closest one when a third voice joined the conversation.

"Bastards!" it said sharply. "Weren't you going to share?"

I felt my breath quicken, but I kept quiet, because the two other spiders stepped back. One of them made an angry noise that sounded most like a growling rabbit.

"All right, then," it said. "We'll bring him to the rest."

"And don't you dare eat him," the third spider commanded. "I've got all of my eyes on you."

"Yesss, Ssir," one of the two other ones whispered.

He – or she – grabbed the flap of web by my feet between its enormous jaws and started to drag me. My head hit all kinds of things – I believe I was being dragged right through a tree or something – but I tried not to make any sound. After a couple of minutes, when my body was already bruised, I was roughly thrown down on something hard, a branch or something.

I could not help it.

I flinched.

And I knew the spider had seen it.

I tried to lie as still as possible and hoped the monster would forget about it, but it did not. The next thing I knew was a pair of jaws cutting through the webs, right above my face. I knew I would die if I did not act quickly, so I acted quickly.

I forced my knife up, into the spider's chest. It made a horrible, ear-piercing, screeching sound.

"It'sss sstill alive!" it shrieked. "It'sss alive!"

I twisted the knife, and the spider stopped moving. It fell through the webs and hit the ground with a loud thump. I shivered, but I did not have time to process how close this had been. I could hear more spiders approaching, and I was in the lair of the beast, or beasts, so they were nearby.

I looked around to see other packages of web around me, at least thirty of them. This must be the other preys.

I quickly went over to the nearest one and cut through the sticky material. The bearded face of a man appeared. I shook him.

"Hey," I said, not too loud, and unable to suppress the tremble in my voice – the spiders were coming closer. I could see the web shaking in the corner of my eye. "Wake up."

The Dwarf jolted upright. He was breathing heavily, probably because of the poison, and I felt great pity for the poor soul, but I did not have time for this.

I spun around to see five spiders burst through the white web. I drew my sword, ready to strike, although I knew this was too much for even me. I could feel my fast heartbeat in my throat.

The spiders had almost reached me when I heard a voice coming from underneath me. Uncle Thorin's voice, to be precise.

"Hey!" he yelled at the spiders. "Fat beasts! Are you hungry?"

As if they had suddenly forgotten about me, the spiders spun around and started to climb down the trees, growling insults I did not understand. The loud battle cries of the Dwarves below seemed to fill the forest.

This was exactly the distraction I needed.

I started to free the web-covered people around me. They were all weak and ill because of the poison, and most of them could barely stand.

I started to become desperate when I cut open the last three packages of web. I had come to rescue Sam, but I had not found her yet. My mind started to produce dark thoughts that I did not want to hear.

Perhaps she is dead.

Perhaps she has been eaten.

Perhaps she is gone.

I cut through the last web and freed the Dwarf inside.

Sam was not there.

I felt my breath quicken.

She was not there. Where could she have gone?

I refused to believe that she was dead.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I almost did not hear the whisper behind me.

"Hey."

I turned around to see her standing there, sword in her hands, pale face, out of breath. She smiled weakly at me, and I smiled back because I was happy that I had found her – Gods, I was so happy I had found her – but then her smile disappeared, and the sword dropped from her trembling hands.

I was just in time to catch her when she passed out.

A/N:

I'm so sorry for taking so long to update! I've been quite busy last week, but there's no school next week, so I hope I can write a lot, so that I can update more frequently!

I've got the entire story planned, so all I need is time and concentration. Have patience with me, my lovely readers! We'll get to the end sometime!